African Camp Fires eBook

one’s own magnificent piece of work! What
is one to conclude? That our early training is
all wrong? that we are at one experience to turn apostate
to the settled and only correct order of things?
Or that our masters are no gentlemen? That is
a pretty difficult thing, an impossible thing, to
conclude of one’s own master. But it leaves
one in a fearful state mentally; and one has no idea
of what to do!

Wayward was a perfect gentleman, and he played the
game according to the very best traditions. He
conscientiously pointed every bird he could get his
nose on. Furthermore he was absolutely staunch,
and held his point even when the four non-bird dogs
rushed in ahead of him. The expression of puzzlement,
grief, shock, and sadness in his eyes deepened as
bird after bird soared away without a shot. Girlie
was more liberal-minded. She pointed her birds,
and backed Wayward at need, but when the other dogs
rushed her point, she rushed too. And when we
swept on by her, leaving her on point, instead of
holding it quixotically, as did Wayward, until the
bird sneaked away, she merely waited until we were
out of sight, and then tried to catch it. Finally
Captain D. remarked that, lions or no lions, he was
not going to stand it any longer. He got out
a shotgun, and all one afternoon killed grouse over
Wayward, to the latter’s intense relief.
His ideals had been rehabilitated.

XX.

Bondoni.

We followed many depressions, in which might be lions,
until about three o’clock in the afternoon.
Then we climbed the gently-rising long slope that
culminated, far above the plains, in the peak of a
hill called Bondoni. From a distance it was steep
and well defined; but, like most of these larger kopjes,
its actual ascent, up to the last few hundred feet,
was so gradual that we hardly knew we were climbing.
At the summit we found our men and the bullock cart.
There also stood an oblong blockhouse of stone, the
walls two feet thick and ten feet high. It was
entered only by a blind angle passage, and was strong
enough, apparently, to resist small artillery.
This structure was simply an ostrich corral, and bitter
experience had shown the massive construction absolutely
necessary as adequate protection, in this exposed and
solitary spot, against the lions.

We had some tea and bread and butter, and then Clifford
Hill and I set out afoot after meat. Only occasionally
do these hard-working settlers get a chance for hunting
on the plains so near them; and now they had promised
their native retainers that they would send back a
treat of game. To carry this promised luxury,
a number of the villagers had accompanied the bullock
wagon. As we were to move on next day, it became
very desirable to get the meat promptly while still
near home.